Posted August 29, 2006; 10:00 a.m.

by Cass Cliatt

An
aged manuscript of a classic Irish play, long thought lost even by the
renowned playwright who wrote it, has made its way to Princeton
University as the gem of a momentous collection of Irish theater
donated by 1953 alumnus Leonard L. Milberg.

The unpublished play
"The Cooing of Doves" by Sean O'Casey is one of more than 1,000 plays,
photographs, playbills and other works documenting the past 160 years
of Irish theater, all given to the University in honor of poet and
professor Paul Muldoon. To celebrate the opening of the collection, the
University will hold a symposium in October, with appearances by
Oscar-nominated actor Stephen Rea, celebrated Irish actors Gabriel
Byrne and Fiona Shaw, Tony-award winning director Garry Hynes and
others.

There is ample cause for celebration because Princeton's
new Irish theater collection may be unequalled by that of any other
educational institution in the world, said Milberg, a noted art
collector who has donated three other major literary collections to
Princeton. This latest establishes the University as a leading resource
for research and scholarship about the Irish stage.

"Whenever I
do a collection, it's important to me that it be a significant
collection in its field," said Milberg, who donated a collection of
modern American poetry to the University in 1988, a collection of Irish
poetry in 1994 and an unprecedented collection of Jewish American
writers in 2001.

"For Irish theater, I don't think there is
anything else like this, especially outside of Ireland," Milberg said
of his most recent donation. "I know people may be interested in a lot
of other things, but if it's Irish theater, they'll call Princeton."

The
new Milberg Irish Theater Collection begins in the mid 19th century and
includes works by Dion Boucicault, whose "sensation" dramas gained
acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic; John Millington Synge, who
founded Ireland's national theater, the Abbey Theatre, in 1904 with
poet William Butler Yeats and author Lady Gregory; well-established
playwrights like Samuel Beckett, Brian Friel and Tom Murphy; and
contemporary writers including Conall Morrison and Graham Reid, in
addition to younger writers, such as Marina Carr, Martin McDonagh and
Conor McPherson.

Milberg decided to donate a collection in honor
of Muldoon -- Princeton's Howard G.B. Clark '21 University Professor in
the Humanities and founding chair of the University Center for the Creative and Performing Arts
-- after the two became friends upon being introduced in 1994 by
members of Princeton's English department. Muldoon was born and
educated in Northern Ireland and moved to the United States in 1987. He
has won numerous awards for his poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize in
2003.

Milberg was impressed with Muldoon's work and agreed to his
suggestion to form an Irish theater collection that could be made
available for research.

"One of the lovely aspects of belonging
to the Princeton community is that people like Leonard, who might
otherwise remain in some distant, impersonal category such as 'major
donor,' turn out to be major friends," Muldoon said.

"The fact
is, that there's nothing quite like this in Ireland itself," Muldoon
said of the collection. "It's an extraordinary resource for our local
scholars -- students and faculty -- who are more and more interested in
Irish theater. It turns out that anyone interested in what's happening
on Broadway, for example, is by definition interested in Irish theater."

Highlighting
the collection are the original playbill for the 1956 production of
"The Quare Fellow" by Brendan Behan, the 1952 first edition of Samuel
Beckett's "En attendant Godot" ("Waiting for Godot"), and the O'Casey
manuscript.

Princeton undergraduates in the English department
will be among the first to explore the "The Cooing of Doves," which
Milberg acquired after it surfaced at an auction last year. O'Casey
later said that he incorporated the one-act play, thought lost, into
the second act of his seminal work "The Plough and the Stars."

"My
students will be among the first to explore this text, and its
importance to an understanding of 'Plough' and its particular moment in
Irish political and cultural history," said Michael Cadden, who teaches
Princeton's "Modern Irish Drama" course.

"Because of the large
role played by artists, and most particularly by theater artists, in
imagining an independent Ireland into existence, the collection will
speak brilliantly to the inextricability of political and aesthetic
questions in modern Irish drama," Cadden said.

From
Oct. 13 to 15, an international gathering of theater aficionados and
scholars will be on campus for a series of events revolving around the
opening of a special exhibition of the collection to be hosted by the
Princeton University Library, running through April 22.

"We're
going to showcase that this collection is remarkable in the way that
Mr. Milberg focused on collecting around what Princeton already had,
arriving at a truly complete collection," said Ben Primer, associate
University librarian for rare books and special collections. Major
Irish-born playwrights like Oscar Wilde, Yeats and George Bernard Shaw,
for instance, are not included in the collection because of the
library's already extensive holdings.

A complete schedule will
not be released until late September, but an academic conference to
highlight the exhibition will include actors Byrne and Rea in lectures,
readings and performances. It will open Oct. 13 with a lecture by Joe
Dowling, a former artistic director of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and
the current artistic director of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

Coinciding
with the symposium will be McCarter Theatre's production of
"Translations," directed by Garry Hynes and considered by many to be
playwright Brian Friel's theatrical masterpiece. The production will
open Oct. 13, and in November, students in the University's theater and
dance program will present John Millington Synge's Irish drama "The
Playboy of the Western World."

"There is no better way to
celebrate the richness and history of Irish theater than to see its
lyricism translated on stage," said Emily Mann, McCarter's artistic
director.

Rounding out the Milberg celebration will be the
publication of a comprehensive catalog of the theater collection and a
special double issue of the thrice yearly Princeton University Library
Chronicle. The chronicle will include historical essays, reminiscences
by contemporary Irish playwrights, the first publication of "The Cooing
of Doves" and an introduction by Princeton University President Shirley
M. Tilghman.

"For Leonard Milberg, a literary collection is
only as strong as the use that is made of it," Tilghman says in her
introduction. "Thanks to his exceptional generosity and infectious
enthusiasm, the work of Ireland's playwrights will find new life on
Princeton's stages, in our galleries and lecture halls, and in the
pages of this journal."

For more information about the new
Milberg collection, the symposium "Players & Painted Stage," and
productions of "Translations" and "The Playboy of the Western World,"
visit the library's symposium Web site.